


Don't Let Me Fall

by hbur08



Series: Thatchers [1]
Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Alternate - Freeform, Broken, F/M, Girl - Freeform, Hate, Love, Murder, boy - Freeform, dont let me fall, kidnap, original - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1478533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hbur08/pseuds/hbur08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia Thatcher is broken. After blaming herself for the death of her parents', she is now a hollow shell and unreachable to the ones who care for her. Her relationship with her sister has hit rock bottom, so she lives a strained life that she can't escape. But when a certain local hero comes into her life, she becomes even more spiteful. Can Peter Parker fix what's broken?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Fear. Every one of us feels it. Whether it be the fear of insects, darkness, loneliness, the breakage of a friendship of relationship. No matter how strong we are, how accomplished we are, fear is always our downfall. And fear leaves behind consequences. Terrible consequences. It did for me. But what should everyone be afraid of? The bully at school? The build up to the drop on a rollercoaster? That dog that always barks and makes you jump out of your skin? Or is it the stories of ghosts, demons and Hell itself? No one should be afraid of those. The real fear, the real enemy in our lives, is the human race itself.

Violent, murderous, selfish. The creators of the atomic bombs, the ones who relish the idea of war, the species who will no doubt end the world. We kill one another, hurt one another. We tell lies, keep secrets, make bad choices. Not a single one of us is a saint. We are all guilty. You. Me. Our families and friends. That old man across the road, and that kid on the bike with the dog. The only time we are innocent is when we cannot think, before we can talk.

But it is fear that defines us, makes us who we are. We rebel against it, try to be stronger. If you are frightened of a bug, you kill it. If you were bullied, you turn into a bully. If you feel threatened, you retaliate. We can't escape the reality of fear. And we also can't escape the consequences that follow. They say that if you kill a spider, you get bad luck. When you bully someone, everyone hates you. When you react to a threat, violence ensues.

I reacted wrongly. I froze, and they died. That was my consequence.

Now everyone is my enemy. Every human is the bad guy. That old man across the road, that kid on the bike with the dog. They were all my enemies. I hated them all. But not as much as I hated myself. I could have saved them, but I let fear get in the way. I could have done something to help, but my stupidity had them killed. And it was humans that killed them. Men, disgusting, selfish men. Monsters. I hated men the most.

Greif, nightmares and death left me damaged. Empty. Unloving, uncaring, unreachable. A hollow shell of hate and despair. That was another problem with the human race. We reflected our emotions. When happy, we smiled and laughed. When sad, we moaned and cried. But when left feeling only hate, you showed your hate. Insults, violence. Some, however, showed it through silence, others through illegal art. I was all of the above. I was an introvert, and outsider, a hater. I trusted no one, not even myself. My foolishness left me angry, and that opened up a world in my head I never knew existed.

I pushed everyone away. I locked myself in my room, shot my music up so that it shook the floor beneath my feet. I snuck out of the house to vandalize some of the alley walls, to show my hate to the world. I shouted insults at random strangers and started fights at school. I loved the violence, the pain I conflicted on others mentally and physically. It made me feel strong, unbreakable, everything I should have felt six months prior.

But then he came along. The man who went around running from the law but saving the lives of 'innocents'. The man who never showed his face, who never lingered. The man who swung from web lines, crawled on walls and showed every criminal who owned the city. I had hated him, too. He never came to help us, not when we needed him. I let them die, and he never showed. I resented him for that. But he ignored my hate, my anger, and pushed his way into my life. He caught me in his web, refusing to let me go until he ate all the spite out of my soul. For some ungodly reason, he believed in me, even when I didn't. In my mind, he was more like a cockroach: he never went away, completely indestructible.

You know who I'm talking about. The guy in the skin tight suit covered in web patterns, a blur of blue and red falling between skyscrapers, and the eyes that pierced your heart and soul. The man who never gave up, even when everything seemed useless. Like me, a lost soul. He never gave up on us, the species who caused so much damage to the world. But who said he was a saint?

My name is Claudia Thatcher. I live with my older sister and her fiancé, and am in my last year of school. I am sixteen years old, with no parents, because I'm the reason they're dead. I thought I was always to be hollow and unloved, hated by many for my hostile ways. But then I got caught in a web. Literally. And nothing was ever the same again.  
This is my story of how Spiderman never let me fall.


	2. End It

I stepped back and admired my work. Hate Is Bliss. That was what I wrote in the most darkest format I could manage. Sharp letters, the red paint seeming to look like blood as it dripped down the brick wall. Sinister. That was the look I had been after. Sharp, dark, to the point. Smiling, I pulled my hood over my head and slipped into the street, mingling with the thin crowd. I stiffed my hands in my pockets, but not before tossing the empty spray paint can into the trash. I was getting better at written art, but I was also getting better at getting away with it.

Even in the crowd and under the lights, I remained a shadow. It was midnight, but of course the city wasn't asleep. Lights blinked and flashed and beamed brightly, blinding and comforting at the same time. But my black hoody, black skinny jeans and black shoes left me as merely a dark figure moving through the crowd. I hated walking along side others. I hated how their arms brushed against mine, even if it was unintentional. They had no right to touch me.

Someone shoved me, a man in a business suit. I shoved him back, pushing him into a couple holding hands.

"Watch it!" I shouted.

"Whoa, take it easy!" he said, his voice annoyed. He came towards me, and my hands slammed into his chest. He fell to the ground, and I slunk back into the crowd, people now parting in my wake. Power, accomplishment. Respect from vermin. I smiled to myself, liking that idea just as much as it disgusted me. At least, for a short, relishing moment, they stopped touching me.

It was a short walk home, to the crappy apartment owned by my waste of time sister, Martha, and her fiancé, Rick Hammond. Martha, a twenty two year old blonde, had had no choice but to take me under her wing. She was a fake. She pretended to be perfect and innocent, looked like a Barbie doll. But on the inside, all she wanted was Rick's money. He had lots of it. Luckily, we shared no resemblance, linked only by blood. She was blonde, I was a brunette. She was taller than average, I was smaller than average. She was plastic, I was pure. And then there was Rick. I had nothing to say about him. He hated me, I hated him. End of story.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor of our apartment building, striding down the hall like a kid who may carry a knife. Intimidating, strong, not to be messed with. Damn right. I reached door number 20 and swung it open, stepping in and slamming it shut behind me. Martha jumped from her place on the sofa, walking over.  
"Where the hell have you been?" she demanded angrily, her blue eyes on fire. I smiled.

"Why do you care, sis?" I said quietly.

"I said to come home at ten o'clock sharp. It's now past midnight!"

"Stop playing the mother act, you suck at it." I shoved past her, walking through the living space, turning right and into the kitchen. I opened the fridge, groaned at its bareness, and shut it again.

"You know what? When you get raped or stabbed or beaten up, don't expect me to care!" Martha shouted, and I laughed.

"Told you that you suck at it." I told her, leaning my back against the fridge. She stood at the edge of the small kitchen, her body trembling with anger. She hated the fact that she had no control over me. She had control over Rick and her friends, but not me. Not the damaged freak she had as a sister. "Where's all the food?"

"You can starve." She spat.

"Charming. Move it." I shoved past her, slamming my shoulder into hers and making her stumble slightly. A small oof came from her lips. I fell into the cushions of the sofa, grabbing the control and switching on the TV. The channel was showing some sort of horror film, blood and gore all in its glory. Suddenly, the screen went black, and I looked across to see that Martha had pulled the plug. She glared daggers at me, crossing her arms somewhat stubbornly. I simply grinned, getting up and walking into my room. The door slammed shut, and I fell into the comfort of my bed.

I listened as Martha kicked something in the main room, hearing a large crash in the process. I smiled. She always did that, but I preferred it when I started the rows between her and Rick. Loud, voices full of anguish, bellowing everything that I felt inside. They always fought about me, Rick often storming out and not coming back until the next morning. Then I'd listen to Martha weep, collapsed on the other side of my door, silently wishing that I never showed up in her little love fantasy. There was one thing I envied about her, which was the fact that she handled mom and dad's death with an open mind. She grieved, she recovered, she tried to move on. But she never anticipated my pain, my inner torment. And slowly, as each month went by, she slowly lost her mind.

I got up from the bed and went to the door, sliding down it before collapsing on the floor. I pushed my hood down, running a hand through my knotted hair. I pressed my ear to the wood, straining to listen. Martha was crying, not far away from my door. I closed my eyes. Then I heard mumbling, and I realised she was murmuring to me.

"I don't know what you want me to do, Claudia." She said, her voice barely reaching my ears. There's nothing you can do. "It's been six months. What can I do to make things easier?" Nothing, there is nothing you can do! I remained silent, curling into a ball on the floor. I'd be lying if I said I never felt guilty for doing these things to her, ruining her once perfect little life. Once upon a time, me and Martha had been closer than best friends. I used to tell her everything, seek comfort from her after a bad day, go out to the cinema with her because we had nothing better to do. I'd loved her with every ounce of my being, and I would have done anything for her. But then Rick came along, and she drifted away from me, from us. She moved in with him a year and a half into the relationship, and that was part of the reason I hated Rick. He stole away my best friend, and she was never the same. She changed for him, pretended to be someone she wasn't. A fake. I liar. But back then, it had only been a grudge, not pure hate. And then, a year after she left, mom and dad died.

The first month consisted on nothing but silence. I locked myself in my room and cried until I felt drained, and I refused to let her console me. If she ever came in, I screamed, so she had no choice but to leave me be. I only ever came out for bathroom breaks, food and water, never uttering a word to her. And then, after that first month, I came out and started talking to her, but nothing nice came from my mouth. Accusations of not loving me, verbal abuse, sometimes physical violence. Rick would step in, and when he would touch me, I flipped. I'd go blind with rage, and the following events would turn out nasty. I had hurt Rick so many times, cut open his skin with my nails, left bruises on his face. But I was never left feeling guilty about hurting him.

I heard a door click shut, and I knew that Martha had gone to her room. It occurred to be that Rick wasn't in the apartment, so I assumed they must have had another argument. What a shame.

Looking through the gloom of my room, my eyes landed on the photo by my bedside. I crawled along the floor, reaching up and taking the frame where the photo had been placed. I stared at mom and dad, Martha and myself, the photo from three years ago. We were at the beach, Martha's blonde hair soaked, wearing her pink bikini. She wore a radiant smile, one that was now completely dead. She had her arm around my bare shoulders, and I was grinning, lifting up the brim of my hat to look at the camera. Behind me was mom, mid laugh, her beautiful face bright with happiness. I looked just like her. Brown hair that flowed in tight coils, reaching way past the shoulders. Eyes the colour of the ocean, skin as fair as snow. Slim and slender. Martha was like dad, who was grinning in mom's direction, his strong arm around her. Brilliant blonde hair, strong face, stunning baby blue eyes. He was a head and a half taller than mom, hence Martha being on the taller side. But every time I looked at that photo, nothing but horror enveloped my mind.  
How did they die, you ask? A mugging gone wrong, I guess. I remembered it so vividly, as if it had literally just happened. The city had just fallen into night, and we were walking home from the grocery store. Me, mom and dad. I had the joys of carrying the bags, one in each hand, while dad carried the third. We'd been laughing and joking, none the wiser. We always had to turn a corner, down a dark alley to get to our apartment building. We had gone through that alley so many times, and it had always seemed so safe. But not that night.

Running. Screaming. Gunshots. Blood.

I shook my head, ridding the images that still haunted me. Gently, I placed the photo back where it belonged, and I clambered to my feet. Like always, I felt empty, drained, falling into a black hole of nothing. I couldn't do it anymore. I wanted the pain to go away. I wanted Martha's suffering to stop. I wanted out. My time was over.

I went over to my window, shoving it up. Tugging the hood back over my head, I climbed out onto the fire escape and looked up. It was a five story building, but if it meant I could escape the torment, it would be worth the climb. So I began to climb. Up. Up. Closer to the end. Heading for the heavens. I practically ran up, desperate to escape. No more pain. No more torment. No more emptiness.

When I reached the top, I flung myself through the door of the top floor. I raced through the corridor, finally reaching the door to the roof. I ran through, thrust back into the cool air of the night. I let the sounds of cars deafen me, inhaled the smells of wastage, tasting the cool air. It was colder up here, high up with now walls to keep the breeze at bay. Open, spacious, the end. Slowly, I walked forwards, towards the perimeter of the building. I stepped up, the image from titanic suddenly framing my mind. Not the part with Rose was with Jack, arms out, feeling the sensation of flying, but before that. The part where she wanted to die.

I looked down, spreading my arms slightly for balance. Slowly does it. Savour the moment. Below were parked up cars, abandoned and just waiting to be used the following day. Someone was going to be in for a treat in the morning. A dead girl on the roof of their car. I could even picture the headlines on the news. Suicidal Girl Found Behind Apartment Building. They'd have a field day.

I closed my eyes, feeling my heart beginning to beat erratically. My skin prickled with nerves, my toes coiling up in my shoes. Steadily, I turned, facing the door that had got be here. My let my breaths fall heavily from my lips.

One... two... three.

I rolled on the balls of my feet, and I fell from the building.


End file.
